Speaker 1: Hi, I'm Molly John Fast and this is Fast Politics,
Speaker 1: where we discussed the top political headlines with some of
Speaker 1: today's best minds. And Trump's economic approval rating falls to
Speaker 1: thirty seven percent. Still seems high to me. We have
Speaker 1: such a great show for you today. The nation's own
Speaker 1: Geed here stops by to talk about Trump and the
Speaker 1: art of the deal in case you're wondering they are
Speaker 1: not good deals. Then we'll talk to the Center for
Speaker 1: American Progress's own Brendan Duke about our port slowdown shipping
Speaker 1: and how we are losing the trade war with China.
Speaker 1: As a special bonus, we'll talk to substacks the Jim
Speaker 1: Acosta shows Jim Acosta about Trump backing down on tariffs.
Speaker 2: Molly, big news out of Illinois, and usually big news
Speaker 2: is not retirements. But we have both Dick Durbin, who's
Speaker 2: one of the senior Mostdems in the Senate, and Repgentik House.
Speaker 2: He both and that's of their retirement in a single day.
Speaker 1: Okay, it looks like a problem, but is actually pretty good.
Speaker 1: So here's what's happening. We have a lot of older
Speaker 1: members of Congress. This has been something that Democrats, Democrats
Speaker 1: are nice and they're good and they're friendly, and so
Speaker 1: they don't make each other retire. And that's why we
Speaker 1: have gotten into a lot of problems with these older
Speaker 1: members who get sick or die. We had two members
Speaker 1: who died this year in the House, and the Republicans
Speaker 1: in the Republican governors aren't letting their be elections to
Speaker 1: fill the seats. This is actually a real problem. What
Speaker 1: is very interesting and I think important is that we
Speaker 1: are seeing candidates run despite this and this story Katabuzagala,
Speaker 1: she's a young TikToker, very good at communicating. She decided
Speaker 1: to run against her local rep who is a woman
Speaker 1: called Jen Schakowski, who has been in office since nineteen
Speaker 1: ninety eight, so that's twenty six years she did this,
Speaker 1: and actually Shakowski has dropped out. So this is a
Speaker 1: really good sign that when these younger people sometimes primary
Speaker 1: a candidate, it works. And the truth is, one of
Speaker 1: the big problems Democrats are having right now is having
Speaker 1: these members who just hang on for a long time
Speaker 1: and who aren't good communicators or who don't really have
Speaker 1: the bandwidth to do the job. And there are a
Speaker 1: lot of people who have done a lot of great
Speaker 1: service for this country. And it's not that we don't
Speaker 1: love them, it's just that right now, if America is
Speaker 1: in an emergency, which I think all of us feel
Speaker 1: that way right this creeping authoritarianism is a real thing.
Speaker 1: If America is in an emergency, then we need Democrats
Speaker 1: are ready to meet an emergency.
Speaker 2: I think Rokana put it really well today that we
Speaker 2: should always be welcoming these primaries. He said he's probably
Speaker 2: gonna be the only Congressman who says it, but he's like,
Speaker 2: these are not lifetime appointments. And I applaud Rokana for
Speaker 2: saying that.
Speaker 1: He's right, We really really really need this and it's
Speaker 1: an emergency, and so we need our electeds to be
Speaker 1: able to meet this moment. And Rocanna is right and
Speaker 1: this is the right thing. And we should also celebrate
Speaker 1: the members who are retiring. So we have Durbin who's retiring.
Speaker 1: He has done incredible work. We're so grateful for his service.
Speaker 1: He's retiring. Now we have a bunch of people running
Speaker 1: for that seat. It's Illinois. We have it's a safe
Speaker 1: Democratic seat. Lauren under What is going to run. But
Speaker 1: also Raja Krishna Morti has already almost twenty million dollars
Speaker 1: and is going to run too. So yeah, there's going
Speaker 1: to be a big, big race for this very important
Speaker 1: senten seed.
Speaker 2: My Pew has a pullout that I think is very encouraging.
Speaker 2: I'm going to shock you here. Americans. They're kind of
Speaker 2: into this whole rule of law thing.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, this was not a good day for Trump's polls.
Speaker 2: Earlier, it was hard to not write the whole show
Speaker 2: off of bad poors.
Speaker 1: Right, It just bad poll after bad poll after bad polls.
Speaker 1: So this one says, share say it's important that judges
Speaker 1: are impartial in deciding cases. And you know that Trump
Speaker 1: went after the judiciary, just like Elon went after the judiciary.
Speaker 1: And instead of going and saying, yeah, the judiciary stinks,
Speaker 1: they just sort of went after like Elon. For example,
Speaker 1: Elon was like, he poured all this money into the
Speaker 1: Supreme Court race in Wisconsin and he lost, and he's
Speaker 1: decided he's going to do doge And now his profits
Speaker 1: at TESLA are down seventy one one percent. This is
Speaker 1: a pretty good indication of what the American people don't like,
Speaker 1: and they don't like the richest man in the world
Speaker 1: cutting their social safety net.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that sounds about right. So Sarah Huckabee Sanders has
Speaker 2: written to mister Trump and she's saying, I need federal
Speaker 2: assistants and I do feel bad. They've had a horrible
Speaker 2: run of fourteen tornadoes in Arkansas in March. But mister Trump,
Speaker 2: he's not feeling her vibe.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, it's funny. I looked at this headline
Speaker 1: and I thought it might be Bernie Sanders says Arkansas
Speaker 1: and dire need of federal assistance, and then I realized, No,
Speaker 1: it's Sarah Sanders, the one, the first and last time
Speaker 1: those two people will ever be confused. But FEMA exists
Speaker 1: for a reason, and just because the Republicans don't like
Speaker 1: it doesn't mean it's not needed. These are We're in
Speaker 1: a moment where America has real climate emergencies. This is
Speaker 1: one of them. Arkansas needs the money, they need these
Speaker 1: federal five and now we have a Republican senator who
Speaker 1: is asking for it. So I don't know. You know,
Speaker 1: the whole thing with Trump is that he wants like
Speaker 1: to have fivedoms and to have people come and beg him.
Speaker 1: But you cannot think of someone who has been a
Speaker 1: more loyal henchman for Donald Trump than Sarah Sanders. So
Speaker 1: we'll see how this plays. But first the news. Jed
Speaker 1: here is a contributor to the nation and the host
Speaker 1: of the Time of Monsters. Welcome back to Fast Politics,
Speaker 1: jed Here.
Speaker 3: It's always good to be on the program.
Speaker 1: There's so much dysfunction happening. I remember this from twenty
Speaker 1: sixteen because we're that old. But like every at every place,
Speaker 1: it's like you just when you cover this administration, you
Speaker 1: never know where to start because there's so much dysfunction.
Speaker 1: Should we start with trade wars are good and easy
Speaker 1: to win?
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, I know. I mean I think that's a
Speaker 3: good place to start.
Speaker 4: The obvious dysfunction that we're seeing on the surface laplohole. Well,
Speaker 4: you know, like basically we have this pattern where like
Speaker 4: you know, Trump announces the trade war, the stock market
Speaker 4: starts tanking. You set out stop percent to say no, no,
Speaker 4: we don't actually seriously read it. We're actually escalating to
Speaker 4: de escalate, and we're using this to like have more
Speaker 4: free trade, and the stock market calms down, and then
Speaker 4: Trump has a breather and then I realizes, Okay, now
Speaker 4: I can just say, like we're launching a trade war
Speaker 4: to create an uh aucarchy so the US never has
Speaker 4: to deal with other donations in the stock market tanks. Again,
Speaker 4: it is a kind of pattern that's been set, or
Speaker 4: you know, it's a little bit of a month we've
Speaker 4: had this happened, but like three or four times, you know.
Speaker 4: But having said that, I mean, I think because I
Speaker 4: was just talking to the economist Marshall Steinbaum of the
Speaker 4: University of Utah, and he made a very good point,
Speaker 4: which is that while one is looking at the chaos,
Speaker 4: it's also worth addressing the underlying like logic of what
Speaker 4: Trump is doing, and which is to try to create
Speaker 4: a more regressive tax base for the United States, because
Speaker 4: like Trump is a doesn't just talk about like you know,
Speaker 4: he doesn't like trade deficits and whatnot, doesn't wants to
Speaker 4: reach store and have manufacturing jobs in the US. Like
Speaker 4: a lot of what he says is like, wouldn't it
Speaker 4: be great if we get rid of the personal income
Speaker 4: tax at corporate taxes and just rely on tariffs. Tariffs
Speaker 4: are like the super regressive like tax where like you know,
Speaker 4: like basically ordinary people everything gets much more expensive. So
Speaker 4: I think Marshall's plinny which I think is worth taking seriously.
Speaker 4: Is like that lines up with everything else Trump does,
Speaker 4: Like it lines up with his like tax policy, it
Speaker 4: lines up with what he's doing to student debtors, like
Speaker 4: really going after they want to have a much more
Speaker 4: pseudocratic friendly America. And I think that, like, you know,
Speaker 4: when the Democrats talk about this, like it's not enough
Speaker 4: to talk about just the chaos, but like what's the
Speaker 4: underlying vision?
Speaker 3: What is the end goal here? And the end goal
Speaker 3: is you know, like basically the dominance of like the
Speaker 3: super we're wealthy like over everything.
Speaker 1: But I'm going to pause for a minute because you
Speaker 1: were ascribing three dimensional chests to Donald Trump, and you
Speaker 1: should never describe three dimensions. This is always my man
Speaker 1: is eating the checkers. Sure, there is a part of
Speaker 1: Donald Trump that was like eighteen hundred's best time for
Speaker 1: American life, no income tax, wildly huge tariffs. We had
Speaker 1: the pores doing their thing, we had you know, our
Speaker 1: people built mansions, and it was the best time. It
Speaker 1: was the Golden Age, so right, the Gilded Age. He
Speaker 1: clearly has read one book about this.
Speaker 3: I don't he's even read a book. Somebody told m
Speaker 3: Steve Banden told of.
Speaker 1: Yes, but I'm going to add I read a story
Speaker 1: in the Washington Post today. Now again, I don't think
Speaker 1: this will ever happen. I don't even think it's true.
Speaker 1: But I want you to tell me what you think
Speaker 1: about this story, a story in the Watching Post that
Speaker 1: said that Donald Trump is actually considering raising taxes for
Speaker 1: people who make over a million dollars. Tell me why
Speaker 1: this is absolute bullshit, but more importantly, why someone in
Speaker 1: Trump world is pushing this narrative at all.
Speaker 3: Yes, I don't think that this is ever gonna happen.
Speaker 1: Ever, ever, ever, ever go on?
Speaker 4: Well there is, I mean, like you know, like I don't.
Speaker 4: I'm not saying three dimension leveled chests. But I do
Speaker 4: think that like Trump basically has a world that he wants,
Speaker 4: which is a world that you can imagine from a
Speaker 4: guy who like builds a giant building too named after
Speaker 4: himself with gold toilets, right Like, he wants.
Speaker 3: To be like a king. And the thing with being
Speaker 3: a king is like one way that you have power
Speaker 3: is like you can decide who gets favored or not.
Speaker 3: And we see this with the tariffs, right, Like, one
Speaker 3: of the things with the tariffs is the carvas you
Speaker 3: oppose the tariffs, and then but then you have all
Speaker 3: these rich people for Silicon Valley to say, well, actually
Speaker 3: we really need these computer parts, and can you give
Speaker 3: an exemption, and that he can grant the exemption, and
Speaker 3: by the way, you know, can you throw in money
Speaker 3: to us.
Speaker 4: And I think that this threat of like taxes on
Speaker 4: millionaires is kind of like part of that, where like,
Speaker 4: you know, this is again, this is a good way
Speaker 4: to get people to bow down and scrape in front Trump.
Speaker 4: And also, I mean there's a kind of fiscal component,
Speaker 4: which is that I think that there are people in
Speaker 4: the Republican Congress who are kind of genuine deficit hawks.
Speaker 1: Thomas Massey, Yeah, yeah, looking at stuff and thinking like,
Speaker 1: you know, like how the hell are we going to
Speaker 1: pay for any of this.
Speaker 4: There's a little bit to propreciate them, a little bit
Speaker 4: to propreciate the sort of Steve Bannon faction, which is
Speaker 4: like out of power, but which is a component of
Speaker 4: the coalitionion and which has been like really angered by
Speaker 4: the Elon Musk, you know, having so much sway, you know,
Speaker 4: as with a tear war, a lot of it is
Speaker 4: kind of like a show and tell and also a
Speaker 4: lot of it is I just heard about it. Trump,
Speaker 4: you know, has the mind of a goldfish or of
Speaker 4: a you know, I obvious say like a toddler, but
Speaker 4: like toddlers have more of a span.
Speaker 3: I think that Trump. Yeah.
Speaker 4: The thing I actually like, listen to Elmo saying for like,
Speaker 4: you know, like a couple of minutes, I think.
Speaker 3: Trump would get distracted. But Trump basically listens to whichever
Speaker 3: advisor is talking to them. And we saw this recently
Speaker 3: with the story of the Wall Street Journal, which by
Speaker 3: the way, is doing the best reporting on Trump right now.
Speaker 1: Unbelievable. Let's just talk about this second. You may not
Speaker 1: like the Wall Street Journal editorial page, but the Wall
Speaker 1: Street Journal reporters are killing it. Emma Tucker, Bravo. Like
Speaker 1: Wall Street Journal, New York Times, and the Washington Post,
Speaker 1: there's still these newspapers are still reporting it out in
Speaker 1: a way that's really good.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: And so they had this story where like basically, you know,
Speaker 4: you have on the one that Scott Bissan, you know,
Speaker 4: who wants to use tariffs, he's basically going along within
Speaker 4: because Trump wantson but wants to like use them to
Speaker 4: create more free trade. And you know, Peter Navarro, who's
Speaker 4: like a hardcore crew believer. Let's have forkress America, Let's
Speaker 4: have no trade. Navara was like camped out, like Elon
Speaker 4: Wiss camped out at the White House. And there's a
Speaker 4: reason why these guys like don't want to lead from
Speaker 4: sight because as long as they're in the room whispering
Speaker 4: to them, they can get his way. But Navarro had
Speaker 4: a meeting the wall Speatji reported, Then Scott is on
Speaker 4: sALS woman, like.
Speaker 3: You know, bled into the room. So I just started
Speaker 3: like to you know, like say, like you know, the
Speaker 3: stock market stacking and just put up this tweet saying
Speaker 3: you know, we're gonna have a ninety day pause and
Speaker 3: then you know, stock market recovered. I mean, your point
Speaker 3: about like the guy eating the checkers is exactly right.
Speaker 3: That there's a guy, you know, with not a lot
Speaker 3: of inputs control, with a lot of warring ideas within himself,
Speaker 3: willing to like do whatever whoever's talking to him says.
Speaker 3: And so so there might be a faction you know,
Speaker 3: within the White House, you know, that wants to recover
Speaker 3: this of the popular stuff. But but also maybe I
Speaker 3: actually think, like you know, this is a kind of
Speaker 3: he he likes to sort of keep Wall Street at
Speaker 3: Sulton Valley like a little bit fearful so that they'll
Speaker 3: pay respect to him. Right. To me, that's the underlying logic.
Speaker 1: Well, I also think there's something else interesting happening here, right,
Speaker 1: which is Trump has about ten different wars going on, right,
Speaker 1: He's got the trade wars. He just has so many wars,
Speaker 1: and China is really a foe that you don't want
Speaker 1: to fuck with. And I'd love you to talk about
Speaker 1: like they got to be this economy by absolutely just
Speaker 1: being so obstreperous. They stole IP. I mean, just at
Speaker 1: every point, China has really shown that they have no
Speaker 1: respect for any of the norms and institutions. Talk to
Speaker 1: me about what Trump has really hit his match with China.
Speaker 4: It's pretty clear from Besson's recent comrades that they're going
Speaker 4: to back down on China. I mean, this is the
Speaker 4: case that this is maybe the most politically popular part
Speaker 4: of Trump's agenda because there are like legitimate concerns about
Speaker 4: you know, currency manipulation, trade barriers, you know.
Speaker 3: The IP stuff.
Speaker 4: But it is the case that China has the United
Speaker 4: States really integrated economies, like they're the two biggest economies.
Speaker 3: And they are really.
Speaker 4: There's a large part of America's depending on China and
Speaker 4: a large part of China that's dependent on America. And
Speaker 4: it's not just at the tech level, like you know,
Speaker 4: like a lot of you know, China's a big country,
Speaker 4: like one point four billion people who like have to eat,
Speaker 4: and you know, like American farmers like sell a lot
Speaker 4: of stuff. And you know there's this amazing like backup
Speaker 4: tweet say, well, Okay, we're not selling beef to China,
Speaker 4: maybe we could sell out to India. Well, I gotta
Speaker 4: tell you, I was born in India.
Speaker 3: You're not gonna sell that, right, So, I mean, there
Speaker 3: was way too much. There's now a bipartisan consensus.
Speaker 4: And Biden was certainly trying to do like you know,
Speaker 4: like use tariffs and like try to like get tougher
Speaker 4: with China. But the way that Trump is doing it,
Speaker 4: like if you're gonna, as you say, multiple front wars. Right,
Speaker 4: there's a certain like people on the Republican side who
Speaker 4: do have some strategic wisdom and they're basically you know,
Speaker 4: their whole argument for making friends with Russia is to
Speaker 4: do a reverse Kissinger, will be friends with Russia.
Speaker 3: Uh, will draw down the Billies them can focus on China.
Speaker 3: But actually what Trump is doing is like we'll fight
Speaker 3: the entire world and we'll fight China at the same time,
Speaker 3: and which makes no sense. Like like if you're as
Speaker 3: think we'll want to have a trade war with China first,
Speaker 3: you should get everyone else online, right, you should get
Speaker 3: like uh, and what has happened now, Like you know,
Speaker 3: the most amazing thing was Chavan Geese like making this
Speaker 3: big trip around Asia, and China is like not that
Speaker 3: popular for like long historical reasons in many of these countries,
Speaker 3: like it has been an imperialist country in Asia, especially
Speaker 3: like a place like Vietnam, right like after the you know,
Speaker 3: America had the Vietnam War, then Vietnam went and like
Speaker 3: you know, they fought China because China was supporting the camarrouge.
Speaker 3: But here Magi went to like Vietnam, And of course
Speaker 3: it's all stage, but it's interesting that was stage that
Speaker 3: they had huge lines of people coming to cheer him on.
Speaker 3: To anyone who knows the history of Asia, like for
Speaker 3: Vietnam to become friendly with China, it's like, yo, you're
Speaker 3: going against like centuries, if not thousands of years of history.
Speaker 3: Trump is done the basic thing, which is that he's
Speaker 3: like convinced like a large part of the world that youah, like, well,
Speaker 3: Tina is the safer bad I think all the signs
Speaker 3: are kind of pointing towards them, kind of like backing
Speaker 3: down from this trade war with China and backing down
Speaker 3: just because the whole thing was done in such a
Speaker 3: stupid way.
Speaker 1: Ham handed yeah, yeah, yeah, well yeah.
Speaker 3: No, just just in the sense of, you know, you
Speaker 3: have some guy you're gonna fight in the bar, but
Speaker 3: then you also insult everyone else in the bar. You
Speaker 3: get the vtitude like that's.
Speaker 1: Not what you do, but that's what it is. So
Speaker 1: if he had gone and I think this is a
Speaker 1: really important data point, right, had he gone to Canada
Speaker 1: Mexico and said, you guys, my biggest trading partners, we
Speaker 1: are the same continent. Let's remake North American trade. Let's
Speaker 1: redo the trade agreement we've had forever to call it
Speaker 1: Trump American Trade. Well, I'll pretend that it's changed everything.
Speaker 1: I'll take the win, MAGA will be delighted. I'll lie
Speaker 1: about a lot of stuff. And then you could have said, Okay,
Speaker 1: now we're going to bring Japan into North American trade,
Speaker 1: and we're going to have Japan and then we're going
Speaker 1: to bring the EU into North American trade. But what
Speaker 1: he did instead was he said, went to war with Canada,
Speaker 1: went to war with Mexico, and then was like also China,
Speaker 1: and then you have this problem of Japan. So over
Speaker 1: the weekend, Navarro the trade hawks were like, we have
Speaker 1: a deal with Japan. Japan a country that is suffering
Speaker 1: from stagflation. Stagflation a problem that in America we're about
Speaker 1: to have, right, recession, higher prices, inflation plus recession equals stagflation.
Speaker 1: Look at Japan. Also, remember Japan. One of the reasons
Speaker 1: why Japan is in such terrible shape immigrants, right, no immigrants,
Speaker 1: so the birth rate declines, there's no one to work.
Speaker 1: It's just like a disaster. That's the economic future America
Speaker 1: is going to have because nobody's going to want to
Speaker 1: come here. And also we can't get anyone to come here.
Speaker 1: And also when they come here, we put them in jail.
Speaker 1: All bad, all things that are bad. So what happens now,
Speaker 1: So we go to Japan. We said we're going to
Speaker 1: make a deal. Japan says, okay, now, Japan says, no,
Speaker 1: We're going to make a deal with China. They are
Speaker 1: not stupid. They know they can trust China more than
Speaker 1: they can trust Donald Trump's America, and ergo, what are
Speaker 1: we doing?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I know, ye know, And I will actually mention
Speaker 3: this there.
Speaker 4: A strategy that you outlined was basically what Obama was
Speaker 4: like setting up in the last years. Like he was
Speaker 4: basically saying for US a Pacific trade agreement which was
Speaker 4: designed to counter China, which would like try to bring
Speaker 4: in Japan, the Philippines, South Korea, Vietnam into an alliance
Speaker 4: with the US to give it leverage to going against China,
Speaker 4: which to my mind like makes the you know, like
Speaker 4: when you can have all sorts of disagreements on that policy,
Speaker 4: but it actually like mad a certain degree of sense
Speaker 4: rather than taking a fight with like everyone in the
Speaker 4: world at the same time. Well see how this tray
Speaker 4: stuff goes because it is actually something that Trump is
Speaker 4: fairly committed to. He has people who around him were
Speaker 4: like like Navara, were like fanatically committed to it, and
Speaker 4: the sort of power that was granted to him by Congress,
Speaker 4: which the publics aren't going to fight him on, so
Speaker 4: he could actually continue to do a lot of damage.
Speaker 4: And yeah, I actually think that like that is the
Speaker 4: more likely scenario that they will be like this seesaw
Speaker 4: back and forth doing damage a stock market tanking, you know,
Speaker 4: trying to pull back a little bit. I don't see
Speaker 4: how you get out of that doom loop.
Speaker 1: Well, that is the problem with trade wars, right, is
Speaker 1: how do you get out of the doom loop? So
Speaker 1: tariffs go on, things get more expensive. A great example
Speaker 1: is this is something that Elizabeth Warren talked about last week.
Speaker 1: You tearff watching machines tryers become more expensive because it's
Speaker 1: a price war, but in the wrong direction. I think
Speaker 1: the war the problem. The bigger problem here, and you
Speaker 1: see this with Trump's wars on the educational institutions. We
Speaker 1: see this with Trump's wars on other stuff, is that
Speaker 1: you can't trust him. So if you're Columbia and you
Speaker 1: make a deal with him, which Columbia did, Trump wants
Speaker 1: more stuff. He went after this four hundred million dollars
Speaker 1: that he had wanted from them because he had tried
Speaker 1: to get them to pay it twenty years ago. Right,
Speaker 1: Whereas if you're Harvard, you can at least go to
Speaker 1: the courts, and the courts will say this is not legal.
Speaker 1: So you're better off going to the courts, keeping yourself
Speaker 1: in the public. You're safer that way than you are
Speaker 1: trying to make a back alley deal with Trump.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 3: No, I think that's absolutely right.
Speaker 4: I mean, I mean this is actually very interesting that
Speaker 4: like in the we saw this, like there's a lot
Speaker 4: of sort of elite surrender to Trump, you knowing their
Speaker 4: media in Wall Street, in the big law firms, in
Speaker 4: the universities, but like because of his who he is,
Speaker 4: and you know, like if you give him an inch,
Speaker 4: he'll take him mine everyone. Even though all these elitian
Speaker 4: institutions that were very inclined to surrender to him, like
Speaker 4: they're certainly waking up. But I think you see the
Speaker 4: same thing in big law and even beyond Harvard, like gee,
Speaker 4: I think the most positive thing coming out of higher
Speaker 4: education is I think a lot of the universities are
Speaker 4: going to try to come together and to try to
Speaker 4: have a common friend, which is what you have to do.
Speaker 4: But that he you know, like they're the impulse that
Speaker 4: people had to negotiate with surrender to him is basically disappearing,
Speaker 4: you know, exactly it's still there among like you know,
Speaker 4: some very rich, powerful people, because he does have this
Speaker 4: thing where like it's all about like you know, deals
Speaker 4: and favors and winning his favors. So you know, I mean,
Speaker 4: I think the example of it persisting is like CBS
Speaker 4: and how the executive producer of sixty minutes basically quit
Speaker 4: because CBS it looks like they want to toll the
Speaker 4: Trump line.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I think it'll be interesting to see because
Speaker 1: the thing is, we've seen so much obeying in evance
Speaker 1: that we now have a situation where the public is
Speaker 1: so hungry for people to take a stand. You have
Speaker 1: people giving to Harvard. Harvard has a gazillion dollars, it
Speaker 1: is so rich, but they are a symbol of resistance. Now,
Speaker 1: this is what it is. It's real true.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, well I will say I don't people should
Speaker 3: give to Harvard, they have enough, funny, but certainly, like
Speaker 3: any other institution that resists Trump will get support and
Speaker 3: should be supported, including like this podcast. So you know
Speaker 3: this exactly. But but you give them all. He don't
Speaker 3: give to Harvard, But that's the right, No, you.
Speaker 1: Can give it. There's you know, just listen to the podcast.
Speaker 1: That's what you gotta do.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, but but it's absolutely the case. Yeah, there's
Speaker 3: absolute hunger for resistance.
Speaker 4: The Democrats even like the immigration like von Holland went
Speaker 4: down tells Salvador and now like all the Democrats are like,
Speaker 4: you know, like actually taking a stance of like going
Speaker 4: visiting the people that Trump is trying to deport. So
Speaker 4: I actually think that, like you know, we always seeing
Speaker 4: people realize that, like, no, the positive incentive is like
Speaker 4: not to give into this guy. You don't actually get
Speaker 4: anything if you make try to make a deal with Trump.
Speaker 1: And you'll lose it quickly.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you'll lose it quickly. Yeah, I mean I actually think,
Speaker 3: like you actually absolutely see this with like on the
Speaker 3: international level, where like nobody, I mean, this is the thing,
Speaker 3: you know, they really want to try to make a
Speaker 3: deal with China, try to make a deal with Japan,
Speaker 3: but like nobody is actually gonna make any sort of deal.
Speaker 4: There's no incentive, and you know, you actually get a
Speaker 4: lot more by resisting Trump.
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly. Get here. Thank you, thank you, thank you,
Speaker 1: thank you, thank you.
Speaker 3: Always great to be on.
Speaker 1: Jim Acosta is the author of The sub Stack, The
Speaker 1: Jim Acosta Show, and the author of the New York
Speaker 1: Times bestseller The Enemy of the People, A Dangerous Time
Speaker 1: to Tell the Truth in America. Welcome Jim Acosta.
Speaker 5: Hey, how are you. I'm so happy to see you.
Speaker 1: I'm so happy that we are here and not at Seacott.
Speaker 5: Give it time, give it time, no due process, right.
Speaker 1: So, trade wars are good and easy to win. Did
Speaker 1: we win the trade war?
Speaker 5: I don't know. Is this winning?
Speaker 3: Is that?
Speaker 6: What are we tired of the winning? I mean, honestly,
Speaker 6: what this shows is that Donald Trump will blink. Donald
Speaker 6: Trump will back down. I mean, you know, I've covered
Speaker 6: him for a long time now, for all the bluster,
Speaker 6: for the image he likes to project at his rallies
Speaker 6: and so on. He's the business guy who sits at
Speaker 6: the table and yells you're fired, and does all this
Speaker 6: stuff the art of the deal and everything else. He
Speaker 6: backs down, He blinks, and it sounds as though, you know,
Speaker 6: for the guy who is still super sensitive about how
Speaker 6: he's viewed in New York and down on Wall Street
Speaker 6: and whatever, he still can't throw his weight around with
Speaker 6: with that crowd. That crowd came to him and said
Speaker 6: you need to back down, And he backed down.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think that's right. I think that's exactly right.
Speaker 1: I mean, I think that's it almost feels like Scott
Speaker 1: Bestent one. It was a Peter Navarro Scott Bessent contest,
Speaker 1: and Scott won and Peter lost, Thank god, because had
Speaker 1: Peter lost, we'd all be, you know, heading towards Jupan
Speaker 1: level stagflation.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 6: And I mean, and the other thing too that's been
Speaker 6: on my mind is, you know, if you look at
Speaker 6: the breakdown of the vote in the twenty twenty four election,
Speaker 6: and I take this maybe a bit more sensitively than others,
Speaker 6: but Generation X, you know, they they pretty much lined
Speaker 6: up behind Donald Trump. I mean that was one of
Speaker 6: his best demographics. And your generation right as my generation.
Speaker 5: I know, I'm not going to lump you in with me.
Speaker 1: Jesse and I are at the very tale end.
Speaker 6: Which generation is the most hyper sensitive about there for
Speaker 6: one case right now, it's got to be. I mean,
Speaker 6: sure people are baby boomers, young baby boomers on the
Speaker 6: referge to retirement and so on, but Gen xers and
Speaker 6: it's so you got to you know, you got to
Speaker 6: be rethinking this one, you know, right, if you're in
Speaker 6: this age group, I mean, look, at what he's done
Speaker 6: with the economy. And this is a generation that is
Speaker 6: so dependent upon the outlook of their four one ks
Speaker 6: and their investments and so on, and they're just you know,
Speaker 6: it's all in the state of turmoil for the next
Speaker 6: three years.
Speaker 1: Let's talk about this this because you covered him in
Speaker 1: his first admin a ton he was super mad at you.
Speaker 1: They took away your hard pass you've had. Here's a
Speaker 1: question for you that Trump polling. When he came into
Speaker 1: office this most recent time, there was a feeling that
Speaker 1: he was actually popular, he had won the popular vote.
Speaker 1: He had he said, I have a mandate. He you know,
Speaker 1: there was a real feeling the billionaires stood on this stage.
Speaker 1: All of those numbers are gone. He is now almost
Speaker 1: as as he is, almost more unpopular than he was
Speaker 1: in his first administration.
Speaker 5: Right.
Speaker 6: Well, yeah, I think it's because of the way he's
Speaker 6: monkeyed around with the economy. Yeah, you know, not to
Speaker 6: go back to that issue, but you know, I think
Speaker 6: a Gallop poll that just came out shews fifty three
Speaker 6: percent of Americans view their financial situation negatively. It's the
Speaker 6: first time that that's happened since two thousand and one.
Speaker 6: I believe something along those lines. You know, you can
Speaker 6: only screw around with the economy so much, you can
Speaker 6: only screw around with the financial market so much. And
Speaker 6: people have figured out the tariffs. I went to get
Speaker 6: my car service this week.
Speaker 5: Not to just give a.
Speaker 6: Completely weird anecdote, but I went to get my car
Speaker 6: service and I was asking the lady at the dealership,
Speaker 6: you know, are people freaked out? And she said, oh, yeah,
Speaker 6: they're freaked out. People came in and tried to buy cars.
Speaker 6: Like one hundred people came in over the weekend and
Speaker 6: bought cars because they're worried about the prices going on.
Speaker 6: I mean, people are starting to understand the effects of
Speaker 6: these terroriffs. And you know, even people in Mago world
Speaker 6: have figured this out. And so of course he's underwater
Speaker 6: and he's he's going to continue to plunge. He can't
Speaker 6: help himself.
Speaker 1: I think that's important just to like keep going on
Speaker 1: this for a minute. So best in sort of one.
Speaker 1: And now they're saying it might be forty percent, might
Speaker 1: be fifty percent. They don't know, it might be this
Speaker 1: might be that the whole point of the trade war
Speaker 1: was to get manufacturing on shore. That's a one year project.
Speaker 1: And again you are not going to have to get factories.
Speaker 1: That's a big job. It's going to mean all sorts
Speaker 1: of things. It's going to be a big deal. Now
Speaker 1: that that did not you know now that they're they're
Speaker 1: backing down, that is not. Now there won't be any
Speaker 1: onshoring of manufacturing, right like you're not going to build
Speaker 1: a factory if you don't know what's going to happen
Speaker 1: in a week.
Speaker 6: Yeah, and there are so many carve outs, you know,
Speaker 6: I mean, what's the point of having a trade war
Speaker 6: with China if you're going to exempt Apple and iPhones?
Speaker 5: Now, you know, I mean, there there's that question. So
Speaker 5: all of this is I you know, I don't know
Speaker 5: who came up with this line of thinking.
Speaker 3: First.
Speaker 6: I won't claim credit because it's I didn't. It's not
Speaker 6: an original thought. But basically, the point of the terrorists,
Speaker 6: just like the point of everything else, is to have
Speaker 6: people groveling at Trump's May's begging for mercy. It's just
Speaker 6: it feeds into his his need to be you know,
Speaker 6: fond over and cared for and have his you know,
Speaker 6: his feelings you know, stroked and so on. And I
Speaker 6: and I just have to think that that's what this
Speaker 6: is all about, because if he really felt strongly about
Speaker 6: all of this, he would be holding firm. And it
Speaker 6: took like what a week basically back down. They're putting
Speaker 6: out these signals that no, no, no, he's not going
Speaker 6: to lower the terrorists on China. But it's all these
Speaker 6: mixed signals and you turn on at CNBC for five
Speaker 6: minutes and this is what they're ranting and raving about.
Speaker 6: That the uncertainty in the markets is just it's just
Speaker 6: wreaking absolute havoc. And you have to wonder how long
Speaker 6: the system could take this.
Speaker 1: And let's get back to appeasement for a minute. So yeah,
Speaker 1: with the back and forth on the tariffs. Now we
Speaker 1: have these cases of the universities. Right, Trump is trying
Speaker 1: to play a card out of the Victor Orbon school
Speaker 1: of like of university capture, right, hunish the elites, the academics,
Speaker 1: get them because they are absolutely the kind you know.
Speaker 1: The idea is to silence the thought and dissent. He's
Speaker 1: got a deal he's making with Columbia where they've just
Speaker 1: given up and are doing whatever he wants. And then
Speaker 1: Harvard is fighting back against him, who is in a
Speaker 1: better spot.
Speaker 5: I think the obvious answer is Harvard.
Speaker 6: And this has been sort of what has been playing
Speaker 6: out since he came back into office. Is you saw,
Speaker 6: you know, institutions bending the knee, cutting deals, law firms
Speaker 6: just you know, completely subjugating themselves. And it's been an
Speaker 6: embarrassment for lots of important institutions in this country.
Speaker 5: And I you know.
Speaker 6: It's it's it's a fairly revealing episode because what Harvard
Speaker 6: has shown and I think what you're starting to see
Speaker 6: some for some other folks in various industry. I mean,
Speaker 6: look what Bill Owens did over at CBS in sixty minutes.
Speaker 6: You know, I do think that the folks who don't
Speaker 6: bow down, the folks who decide to fight and take
Speaker 6: this stuff on, they're just going to come out ahead
Speaker 6: in the long run.
Speaker 5: And I think.
Speaker 6: There's there's a there's a tendency on Trump's part and
Speaker 6: I've observed this over time when the fight gets to
Speaker 6: be too tough, when it involves too much work, he
Speaker 6: starts to back down.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it's like the terrorist thing.
Speaker 6: It's just too much, it's too much work for him
Speaker 6: to fight it right, and and so it's just easier.
Speaker 5: Can I get this wrapped.
Speaker 6: Up by Friday, So I got down, I got a
Speaker 6: tea time with so and so billionaire guy.
Speaker 5: And it's like the Harvard thing.
Speaker 6: I think that an eventual come out ahead because it's
Speaker 6: too much for him. He doesn't want to keep fighting
Speaker 6: it out, so he'll make it difficult for them for
Speaker 6: a while.
Speaker 5: But look what happened to Look what just happened today?
Speaker 6: He backs off of Jerome Powell, and what happens within
Speaker 6: like six hours he starts beating up on Zelenski.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 5: Yeah, he just moves from one thing again.
Speaker 6: Right, And I've been I've been calling it to see
Speaker 6: and say presidency, because you know, it's like that old
Speaker 6: toy you pull the string.
Speaker 5: This is a duck.
Speaker 6: This is a he can only do. He can only
Speaker 6: pick on one thing at a time. And it's the
Speaker 6: same tire talking points.
Speaker 1: No, I think that's really what you're saying right now
Speaker 1: is so important and it's such a good lesson from
Speaker 1: trump Ism. And we remember this from trump One point,
Speaker 1: how is that if you just keep going, he will forget.
Speaker 1: And for example, that's the difference, like I think about
Speaker 1: the law firms that have made deals with him. He
Speaker 1: is now musing about like maybe they'll represent coal miners,
Speaker 1: maybe they'll do you know, because once you're captured by him,
Speaker 1: you are captured by him.
Speaker 6: It's like, oh, well, the law firm of Dewey Cheatham
Speaker 6: and how they're on board with us. You know, let's
Speaker 6: let's give them, uh, you know Stephen Miller's side hustle
Speaker 6: business of going after DEI program. I mean, it's just
Speaker 6: like you just are just going to make more pain
Speaker 6: and suffering for yourself in the long run. And you know,
Speaker 6: like I mean, I like you brought my press pass case,
Speaker 6: like I learned my press pask.
Speaker 5: When we pushed back, he backed down. It takes time.
Speaker 5: It's messy, comfortable court. What's that you win in court?
Speaker 1: You win in court?
Speaker 5: How yeah? I mean, we still have judges in this country.
Speaker 3: Judge restored a voa. Uh.
Speaker 5: In the last couple of days.
Speaker 6: Judge another judge or jury slapped down Sarah Palin's bullshit
Speaker 6: defamation lawsuit. Like and he you know, Trump understands the
Speaker 6: clock better than anyone when he was up against it
Speaker 6: in legal hot water during the campaign. He played these courts,
Speaker 6: He played these judges like a fiddle. And I think
Speaker 6: what he taught everybody a lesson is you can do
Speaker 6: it right back to him.
Speaker 5: And I think that's what's happening.
Speaker 1: That's right, And I think and I think that that's
Speaker 1: really important. And it's also just when you have when
Speaker 1: you're put when you're up against him, what you have
Speaker 1: to do. The other thing that I think is so
Speaker 1: important is you have to stay loud, stay visible, stay focused.
Speaker 1: Like one of the things that I think really helped
Speaker 1: you was that you were able to stay like, you know,
Speaker 1: you kept talking and you you know, talk about that.
Speaker 6: Yeah, I mean, you just keep going. And what was
Speaker 6: funny during that entire process, It's funny we're talking about
Speaker 6: this Sarah Huckabee Sanders. She was digging in her heels
Speaker 6: as the press secretary and continuing to try to take
Speaker 6: my press pass even though you know, the judge said
Speaker 6: give it back and so on.
Speaker 5: And meanwhile Trump is, you know, telling reporters, well, what
Speaker 5: Jim did wasn't.
Speaker 6: So bad, and that after I got my press pass
Speaker 6: back within the day, he's a question from me. Yeah,
Speaker 6: And it was like, you know, you just you just
Speaker 6: have to you have to just weather the storm with him.
Speaker 6: And I think these these folks are and it's just
Speaker 6: a refresher course for a lot of people and their
Speaker 6: institutions and industries that that didn't get under his thumb
Speaker 6: in the first term in the first go around, and
Speaker 6: they're they're in the cross heres this time around, and
Speaker 6: they don't understand the playbook, and they think appeasement works,
Speaker 6: and it's just the monster. You give the monster food,
Speaker 6: the monster wants more food again.
Speaker 1: And this is the United States of Amnesia, So they
Speaker 1: don't right, they don't remember. They don't remember what happened
Speaker 1: four years ago, so they don't remember that you have
Speaker 1: to push back, that you can't make deals with him
Speaker 1: now he has gone more North Korea than the last time. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and want to talk about this scene from the press
Speaker 1: briefing yesterday where we had the guy with the beanie.
Speaker 1: What is that guy's name, Timpoole with the bean pool.
Speaker 6: Yep, he always wears a beanie. And it was lovely
Speaker 6: and Washington, yester. It was like seventy five degrees. I mean,
Speaker 6: it's like summer. It went from winter to summer. It's
Speaker 6: it's I think he might be the only person in
Speaker 6: Washington with a beanie on.
Speaker 5: But I just I digress can.
Speaker 1: You even wear a beanie when it's so warm up, Like,
Speaker 1: shouldn't you swap it out to it?
Speaker 3: You would?
Speaker 6: You would just have like the swamp season has already
Speaker 6: started earlier. You just have like speeds of sweat coming.
Speaker 1: Back coming from the beanie. The beanie, you take up
Speaker 1: the beanie, it's all wet. So he's clearly wearing the
Speaker 1: beanie because he's losing his hair. Just who cares bebond?
Speaker 1: Half the people in that room are bald.
Speaker 5: Some bald people are sexy. I don't know. That's what
Speaker 5: I've been told, not that I'm going to go that route.
Speaker 5: I got I got you Irish hair.
Speaker 3: It's is not going to happen.
Speaker 1: So lucky, but but I think so. So he's in there.
Speaker 1: He's the first question. The question is basically straight North
Speaker 1: Korean propaganda other people have given you. I don't even know.
Speaker 1: It's like a ten minute question. And then she sort
Speaker 1: of talked to me.
Speaker 6: I know these are these are not briefings anymore. They're
Speaker 6: propaganda sessions, right, And Caroline Levitt is sort of like
Speaker 6: the little lady on the North Korean state TV who
Speaker 6: comes out and she reads her little talking points for
Speaker 6: the night and Kim Jong un was a very dear
Speaker 6: leader today and he did very dear leader things. And
Speaker 6: this is what Caroline Levitt does and now just sort
Speaker 6: of it's like a Johnny Carson Show kind of thing.
Speaker 6: And she's like, well, she can't just do it herself,
Speaker 6: so she's got to have a sidekick. It's kind of
Speaker 6: like the Ed McMahon, you know, he's like the Andy
Speaker 6: Richter and Herran.
Speaker 1: And he's in the new media seat.
Speaker 5: He's in the new media. Does that mean we could
Speaker 5: get in a seat in the briefing room? Does that mean?
Speaker 1: I mean the new media is? It's all now? I
Speaker 1: just want Temple is most famous for having been discovered
Speaker 1: to have taken money from Russia.
Speaker 6: Right right right, And then they said that they didn't
Speaker 6: know that it was coming from Russia. And I think
Speaker 6: the DOJ. I was looking at some of this history
Speaker 6: because I was like, what happened with that?
Speaker 5: Was it? Yeah? I was like Trump, it was was
Speaker 5: it the Russia thing? You know? I was, I was.
Speaker 7: Thinking that and and yeah, they apparently they he and
Speaker 7: a few other of those dudes took some some Russia money,
Speaker 7: but they didn't know, or they claimed they didn't know.
Speaker 5: And the DJ said, well, we don't think that they knew.
Speaker 6: And it's kind of like a sad empathetic exercise that
Speaker 6: the White House Press Secretary for the United States of
Speaker 6: America feels like they have to bring in loyalist podcasters
Speaker 6: to help them get their message out.
Speaker 5: I mean, when you're trying that hard, maybe something's not working.
Speaker 1: You know she is, but you could see a world
Speaker 1: where she ends up being a resistance the hero, right,
Speaker 1: I mean where she because you can see in her
Speaker 1: head like she's covering so hard, but you could see
Speaker 1: in her head like the calculus like maybe you.
Speaker 5: Know, I'd be a twist.
Speaker 3: That'd be cool.
Speaker 6: And I you know, what I've been saying all along
Speaker 6: is is that you know, if she works really hard
Speaker 6: and she studies and does her homework and does her
Speaker 6: special exercises, she too can be as ridiculous as Sean
Speaker 6: Spicer and Sara Huckabee Sanders. I mean, they they are
Speaker 6: kind of like the All Stars. They're like the Hall
Speaker 6: of Fame, the Harlem Globetrotters. She's not quite there yet,
Speaker 6: you know, but she's you know, you put in the work,
Speaker 6: you might get there.
Speaker 1: So everything Trump touches dies right, This is this idea
Speaker 1: that everyone who Trump, you know, the people who he
Speaker 1: goes through, and like if you look at Rudy Giuliani,
Speaker 1: that's certainly been true, right, Shawn Spicer. There are certain
Speaker 1: people who've gone through that, gone in and out of
Speaker 1: that admin and have not left the better for it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Sarah Huckabee Sanders actually is the governor.
Speaker 5: She's the governor of Arkansas.
Speaker 1: She has a real job she.
Speaker 6: Does, and apparently they're in a fight with the Trump
Speaker 6: administration over disaster relief funding. I don't know if you
Speaker 6: saw this, but apparently the administration said to Governor Huckabee Sanders,
Speaker 6: I'm sorry, but you're not getting her disaster relief money.
Speaker 6: So you know, you take one for the team here
Speaker 6: and there look where it gets you. You just don't
Speaker 6: you don't get your disaster relief money. Which is kind
Speaker 6: of a crying sham. I mean, it's one of those stories,
Speaker 6: Molly that we don't have enough time to cover. But
Speaker 6: we we should have enough time, yeah, because we're heading
Speaker 6: into hurricane season. And if they're I mean, like the
Speaker 6: way that they're goofing around with Public Health and goofing
Speaker 6: around with the State Department and signal gait and so on.
Speaker 6: If we're not getting our disaster relief money system straightened
Speaker 6: out before hurricane season, a lot of people are gonna
Speaker 6: be suffering in this country. And I mean, it's it's
Speaker 6: it is actually deadly serious.
Speaker 1: When we talk about out a lot of people suffering
Speaker 1: here there, it seems like we are hurtling towards something
Speaker 1: not good. The vaccine. I just read a piece in
Speaker 1: the Washington Post today about the people don't want to do.
Speaker 1: You know, there's a lot of confusion about vaccines. I
Speaker 1: think confusion is a very generous word for that. But
Speaker 1: there's clearly a lot of back and forth right about
Speaker 1: about vaccines. This is led by RFK. We have children
Speaker 1: dying of measles. This has not never been to sarp
Speaker 1: K Junior. This has never been the kind of thing.
Speaker 1: This is never This is just a totally a phenomenon
Speaker 1: that is post COVID kind of craziness. Do you think
Speaker 1: that's this or most dangerous? I mean, what do you
Speaker 1: think the most dangerous thing this admin is doing right now?
Speaker 6: Is that is one of the most dangerous things. It's
Speaker 6: hard to pinpoint what is the most dangerous thing. I mean,
Speaker 6: I do think when you have what eight hundred some
Speaker 6: cases of measles in West Texas, I mean that is
Speaker 6: that is scary?
Speaker 5: Is that should not be going on? Kids? Two dead kids.
Speaker 5: That should not be going on.
Speaker 6: And you have the Secretary of Health and Human Services
Speaker 6: not giving full throated endorsements for vaccines and it you know,
Speaker 6: it's established science going back decades generations, and he's still
Speaker 6: saying this cuckoo for cocoa puff stuff about autism, you know,
Speaker 6: and and just the other day, you know, talking about
Speaker 6: environmental factors causing autism, and you know, as if he
Speaker 6: has this certainty that comes from some imaginary scientific expertise.
Speaker 5: That he has.
Speaker 6: It's really disturbing stuff. And it has the potential, you're right, mind,
Speaker 6: it has the potential for being perhaps the most devastating
Speaker 6: thing that's happening inside the Trump administration right now, because
Speaker 6: if another pandemic comes along, we're just going to be
Speaker 6: woefully unprepared, and you're going to have people in charge.
Speaker 6: And it's not just RFK Junior Trump was making some
Speaker 6: of these same goofy comments the other day. You're going
Speaker 6: to have a situation where history repeats itself. The government
Speaker 6: is woefully unprepared, and you have wack a doodles in
Speaker 6: charge of public policy, leading millions and millions of Americans astray,
Speaker 6: which of course will exacerbate the public health crisis.
Speaker 5: That's exactly what we saw.
Speaker 6: During COVID and and it could happen again. There's no
Speaker 6: question about it. RFK Junior is probably the most irresponsible
Speaker 6: cabinet pick. I mean, it's Pete Hegseth has got to
Speaker 6: be right up there. But RFK Junior is without question.
Speaker 6: I mean, you couldn't pick a more irresponsible person to
Speaker 6: be in charge of our public health structures. It would
Speaker 6: be shocking if we could just focus on that all
Speaker 6: the time. But it's a moving target every day.
Speaker 1: Jim Acosta, you have the Jim Acosta shew on Subjects,
Speaker 1: which is hugely successful.
Speaker 5: It's going well.
Speaker 6: I enjoy it. You come on, You're part of the
Speaker 6: reason why it's successful. No, and I didn't think that
Speaker 6: this was going to turn in anything. I thought I
Speaker 6: left my open. I thought I was just going to
Speaker 6: go screw around for a little while and go on vacations.
Speaker 5: And it went really well, right, I mean.
Speaker 6: I get to talk to all these cool people, I
Speaker 6: get to have you on. I call it like my
Speaker 6: Friends and Family program because I get to talk to
Speaker 6: a lot of friends.
Speaker 1: Brendan Duke is a senior director for Economic policy at
Speaker 1: Center for American Progress. Welcome to Fast Politics.
Speaker 3: Brandon, thanks for having me on, Molly.
Speaker 1: Okay, I'm going to introduce you in the least annoying
Speaker 1: way possible. Jesse and I were talking about the trade
Speaker 1: war with China. Part of the trade war with China
Speaker 1: is this issue of the shipping. Right China, I think
Speaker 1: it's our fourth largest trading partner. Does that sound right
Speaker 1: to you? Third largest training partner after Mexico and Canada. Right,
Speaker 1: that's right. We are having a trade war with all
Speaker 1: of them, because why wouldn't we be. But Chinese goods
Speaker 1: tend to come from two main ports, the Port of
Speaker 1: Los Angeles and the Port of Long Beach, Right.
Speaker 3: That's right. And they sit right next to each other.
Speaker 3: People don't realize this, but they are just right next
Speaker 3: to each other. Nobody can tell the difference between the
Speaker 3: two when you're looking at them from like a plane.
Speaker 1: And during COVID, what we saw was that we just
Speaker 1: started to see these kind of unintended consequences of COVID,
Speaker 1: so shipping got so backed up that we'd have these
Speaker 1: huge groups of ships just waiting around trying to dock.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's right. People ordered a bunch of stuff online
Speaker 3: because you couldn't do anything fun. People bought too much
Speaker 3: stuff online and it just went through those supe works
Speaker 3: and there wasn't enough space, and they backed up and
Speaker 3: there were one hundred container ships waiting in the Pacific Ocean.
Speaker 1: So, dog, that is supply chain, and that's how you
Speaker 1: got involved in shipping was because of this supply chain story.
Speaker 1: Now we are about to have, or maybe not, but
Speaker 1: probably yes, a big supply chain problem, but not because
Speaker 1: of COVID, but because of Trump.
Speaker 3: That's exactly right.
Speaker 1: Talk us through what's happening and how this went.
Speaker 3: Look during COVID, it was the opposite problem. So, you know,
Speaker 3: people couldn't do anything fun, so they bought a lot
Speaker 3: of stuff online and there's only a certain number of
Speaker 3: reports and only a certain number of places the doctorship,
Speaker 3: and so we got all this backup because people bought
Speaker 3: too much stuff. What we're seeing now is that you know,
Speaker 3: the retailers and other companies that send stuff into the
Speaker 3: United States are not sending it or they're not going
Speaker 3: to send it because they are trying to avoid the terraffs.
Speaker 3: So the last few weeks, last few months, they've been
Speaker 3: sending stuff like crazy because they're trying to get ahead
Speaker 3: of the terraces. But now that the terriffs are here,
Speaker 3: we're sharding to see a drop off in those planned
Speaker 3: shippings crossing the Pacific Ocean, and so that'll start to
Speaker 3: hit the American consumer over the coming months.
Speaker 1: What I saw, because I saw some of this again,
Speaker 1: this feels obscure, This feels like not the excitement that
Speaker 1: it should, but it actually is humongous because what happens
Speaker 1: is that right now we're in this pause period, but
Speaker 1: we're about to have maybe one hundred and fifty seven
Speaker 1: percent TIFFs maybe last maybe fifty today, so fifty or forty.
Speaker 1: But what's not happening is China is not packing ships
Speaker 1: and sending them over. So talk to me about when
Speaker 1: you look at the numbers, what you're seeing over the
Speaker 1: next three weeks.
Speaker 3: Right, So, we've had an importing bonanza over the last
Speaker 3: few weeks, and this week we're still importing a ton.
Speaker 1: And explain why.
Speaker 3: Basically, it takes about two to three weeks to send
Speaker 3: a container ship across the Pacific. Three weeks ago to
Speaker 3: this day was Liberation Day and the tariffs got announced,
Speaker 3: so a lot of the ships coming in now had
Speaker 3: no idea what the tariffs were going to be. And
Speaker 3: then it wasn't until the following week that Trump supersized
Speaker 3: the China tariff to one hundred and forty five percent,
Speaker 3: So the container ships that are landing now did not
Speaker 3: know that there was going to be one hundred and
Speaker 3: forty five percent tariff when they entered here, which, if
Speaker 3: you think about it, it is crazy that small business owners
Speaker 3: who ordered stuff are going to have to write a
Speaker 3: giant check to the US federal government based on a
Speaker 3: cost that they had no idea they were going to
Speaker 3: incur when they ordered the stuff. But let's leave that aside.
Speaker 3: Next week though, the expected shipping. You know, so right
Speaker 3: now we're up like fifty percent compared to a year ago.
Speaker 3: Next week we're going to be about down ten percent.
Speaker 3: So that's the beginning of people just stopped two three
Speaker 3: weeks ago ordering stuff to avoid the terraf.
Speaker 1: So ten percent means that you have ten percent fewer
Speaker 1: goods coming from China. That means that if you want
Speaker 1: to buy something, there's going to be less on the
Speaker 1: shops right.
Speaker 3: Eventually, because they've been on this ordering bonanza. Their warehouses
Speaker 3: are full, They're fuller than usual. This is the shipping
Speaker 3: low season. So it may be a little bit of
Speaker 3: time until you actually see this on the shelves because
Speaker 3: places like Walmart On and Amazon have some really smart
Speaker 3: people who've been trying to work and figure out to
Speaker 3: prepare for this. But if the ship stopped coming, the
Speaker 3: ship stopped coming, and there's going to be in a
Speaker 3: fact over you know, those coming months.
Speaker 1: So what right now, when you look three weeks out,
Speaker 1: you start to really see a drop Yeah. Now, historically
Speaker 1: the shipping is static, right, you have a consistent number.
Speaker 1: So the fact that this drop off that is like,
Speaker 1: clearly China has a plan. They're not going to buy
Speaker 1: from China at one hundred and fifty percent tariff.
Speaker 3: Onto stuff and it's sitting in a warehouse in Guangdong
Speaker 3: and Shanghai. And so especially Trump yesterday said maybe he
Speaker 3: lowsers it to fifty percent. If that's the case, there
Speaker 3: is no way I am putting something on a ship
Speaker 3: right now. I want to wait to at least get
Speaker 3: the fifty percent rat maybe right, right, So even if
Speaker 3: I was planning to eat the one hundred and forty
Speaker 3: five percent tariff just to you know, get you know,
Speaker 3: get through the next few weeks, No way am I
Speaker 3: doing that when there's gonna be a ninety percent cut comment.
Speaker 3: So you know, again, you know, they're just trying to say
Speaker 3: they're trying to wake this thing out because this clearly
Speaker 3: they don't think this is permanent. And so I think
Speaker 3: the financial markets feel relief because they're like, oh, maybe
Speaker 3: Trump will back off on the terraces. Well, what that
Speaker 3: effectively means is people are just not going to send
Speaker 3: stuff across the Pacific because they're trying to avoid a
Speaker 3: triple digit tax.
Speaker 1: So it sounds like what's happening here is that these
Speaker 1: tariffs are freezing global trade for.
Speaker 3: The United States. Yeah, it's not a problem for you know,
Speaker 3: Europeans buying from China. I mean stuff could get cheaper
Speaker 3: for that, right, but says it certainly freezes our trade,
Speaker 3: especially the trade over the Pacific.
Speaker 1: When we talk about freezing our trade. The whole goal
Speaker 1: of this originally was on shoring manufacturing, build stuff in America.
Speaker 1: But because there is not a clear message on these tariffs.
Speaker 1: There is not a clear path for importers or exporters.
Speaker 3: Right, absolutely not. I think it's more like the COVID freeze,
Speaker 3: right because if Congress legislated a one hundred and forty
Speaker 3: five percent tariff, and you know that was enacted and
Speaker 3: not going away, maybe some businesses would look at setting
Speaker 3: up stock factories in the United States to avoid the tariffs.
Speaker 3: Right now, they're you know, not willing to ship stuff
Speaker 3: because they're trying to save a million dollars. Why would
Speaker 3: you spend fifty million dollars on a stock factory in
Speaker 3: the United States if it could go to away in
Speaker 3: a few weeks. Basically, what this just means is businesses
Speaker 3: are just going to sit on their hands when it
Speaker 3: comes to buying stuff overseas as well as investing in
Speaker 3: the United States.
Speaker 1: When we talk about this phrase, there are certain things
Speaker 1: that are cut out for these tariffs. Can you explain
Speaker 1: sort of what the thinking on these cutouts are and
Speaker 1: what they are.
Speaker 3: Some things are cut out because they're tariff elsewhere. So
Speaker 3: for example, it's a ten percent tariff on all imports
Speaker 3: across the world China, one hundred and forty five percent.
Speaker 3: Canada and Mexico are kind of twenty five percent. Some
Speaker 3: things are some things aren't. Can get into that right.
Speaker 1: Now, everything's ten percent, right.
Speaker 3: Except for Canada and Mexico and China. And then Canada
Speaker 3: Mexico is twenty five percent for like half of their stuff,
Speaker 3: and then China one hundred and forty five percent.
Speaker 1: Why is this so complicated?
Speaker 3: Because I mean, the guy's just taking his Twitter posting
Speaker 3: and turning into executive organs. Oh okay, that's what's going on.
Speaker 1: Good deal.
Speaker 3: And so then on top of that, there are these
Speaker 3: sectoral terraffs, right, So the first stealing aluminum, which you
Speaker 3: know we've done sealing illumine terraffs before. That's not topic
Speaker 3: of a deal. Then cars, which is an enormous deal
Speaker 3: because we don't build a car parely in America, we
Speaker 3: buy it, built it in America, Canada, Mexico and things
Speaker 3: across the border a million times. And then medicine is coming,
Speaker 3: and then semiconductors are coming. So they've exempted, for example,
Speaker 3: semiconductors from China from the tariffs, right, but there is
Speaker 3: going to eventually be a twenty five percent tear now
Speaker 3: twenty five percent seems like a deal relative to one
Speaker 3: hundred and forty five percent, but that's the way the
Speaker 3: you know, exemptions work.
Speaker 1: So we have semiconductors and Madison from China being tariffed
Speaker 1: at a rate we have not learned about yet.
Speaker 3: I expect it'll be twenty five percent, but they haven't
Speaker 3: said yet.
Speaker 1: We have everything else from China tariff data rate of
Speaker 1: one hundred and fifty percent, one hundred and sixty four percent,
Speaker 1: or perhaps today fifty percent or forty percent.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's like Russian roulette with American business.
Speaker 1: If you are an importer from China, what is the
Speaker 1: move urban? I mean right now, the move is for
Speaker 1: the next three months everybody. It's because it's three weeks
Speaker 1: since Liberation Day. There's a three month pause, So for
Speaker 1: three months everybody is going to be importing and exporting
Speaker 1: like a lunatic to try to get ahead of it.
Speaker 3: Well, no, the tariffs are in effect now, which is
Speaker 3: why we're seeing the drop off.
Speaker 1: Oh there was a two week pause.
Speaker 3: No, one hundred and forty five percent tariff is in place.
Speaker 3: Oh wow, okay, that's it is currently happening. You know,
Speaker 3: these poor container chips.
Speaker 1: People who tried small businesses.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean a lot of the small business Half
Speaker 3: of what we import in the United States are things
Speaker 3: American businesses used to build other stuff. Right. They're not
Speaker 3: consumer goods. They're things that businesses use, right, So they're
Speaker 3: currently in place. And that's why you know, they were
Speaker 3: they were shipping. When they thought the tariffs would be reasonable,
Speaker 3: they stopped. And that's why we're seeing the extremely sharp drop,
Speaker 3: you know, especially because you know it's like we see
Speaker 3: like a thirty percent drop off and expected imports two
Speaker 3: weeks from now. I expect that's mostly the China stuff.
Speaker 3: The stuff from like Vietnam and Japan and stuff like that.
Speaker 3: Those things are probably still coming because it's only a
Speaker 3: ten percent tariffs.
Speaker 1: But Trump tried to make a deal with Japan, and
Speaker 1: Japan said we're going to make a deal with China.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and actually I think the discussion of deals I
Speaker 3: think has actually been hugely misleading. Yeah, for for this reason.
Speaker 3: So Trump initially, you know, proposed the Liberation Day tariffs
Speaker 3: of like twenty five percent or so for Japan. You
Speaker 3: are closest allies who are supposed to be helping with
Speaker 3: counter China. But you know, whatever twenty five percent. Then
Speaker 3: everybody said this is insane, so he backed off for
Speaker 3: ninety days, right, so he's deal, and then he moved
Speaker 3: it down to ten percent, and it's ninety days in July.
Speaker 5: You know.
Speaker 3: The idea is we have these trade deals and then
Speaker 3: it won't be twenty five percent, but it will still
Speaker 3: be ten percent. He has said, the White House has
Speaker 3: said it is going to be ten percent no matter what.
Speaker 3: So no matter what this deal is, it is still
Speaker 3: going to be ten percent. And we are not talking
Speaker 3: with China, we are not talking with Canada and Mexico.
Speaker 3: We're talking about getting rid of the steel, aluminum, car, medicine,
Speaker 3: and semiconductor terrasts. So even if Phoenix deals with all
Speaker 3: of these countries they're talking about doing, we are still
Speaker 3: seeing the highest terraff right since the nineteen thirties. We're
Speaker 3: still seeing a three percent increase in overall prices in
Speaker 3: the United States. We're still seeing a five thousand dollars
Speaker 3: reduction in American households purchasing power. We're still seeing a
Speaker 3: ten increase in terrast that is ten times larger than
Speaker 3: Trump's first term. That is with the deals. Right, So
Speaker 3: there's all this talk of oh, if it gets these deals,
Speaker 3: et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Getting the deals just
Speaker 3: means we're continuing the current situation, which a lot of
Speaker 3: people worry about. A recession. Not getting a deal would
Speaker 3: be worse. But getting a deal does not mean we
Speaker 3: are you know, we are home free here.
Speaker 1: One of the sort of nightmare of scenarios is stagflation.
Speaker 1: It means recession with inflation. So usually in a recession,
Speaker 1: people don't buy things, they get cheaper. You have less money,
Speaker 1: but things are cheaper. You can get out of it
Speaker 1: because you know, it sort of works out stagflation. This
Speaker 1: night meare scenario is that things are inflated, they get
Speaker 1: more expensive, but you're in a recession, so you have
Speaker 1: less buying power and things are more expensive. How do
Speaker 1: we not end up in stagflation?
Speaker 3: I think the only way we avoid stagflation is Congress
Speaker 3: reasserts its constitutional power to set tariffs and takes away
Speaker 3: the car keys from Donald Trump. That's the that's the
Speaker 3: only way we can do it. If Trump says, well,
Speaker 3: I'm not going to enact the tariffs, who's going to
Speaker 3: believe him? If Congress takes away his power to do it. However,
Speaker 3: I think businesses will you know, have that confidence to know, okay,
Speaker 3: like we're you know, we're gonna avoid this. So that
Speaker 3: is the only it's the smartest economic policy imaginable is
Speaker 3: just taking away the car keys from Donald Trump.
Speaker 1: Congress can do it, but also the Supreme Court can
Speaker 1: do it. So talk us through that, yeah, because he
Speaker 1: doesn't really have this power. I mean, this was an
Speaker 1: emergency power he gave himself and everyone was like, ooh.
Speaker 3: Guy, right, so you know, first, let me, you know,
Speaker 3: do the non disclaimer. And you know, I've walked with
Speaker 3: a lot of lawyers about this who know stuff, but
Speaker 3: not a lawyer. But my understanding is this, so there's
Speaker 3: normal trade processes by which we imposed tariffs. Trump has
Speaker 3: actually done that for the steel and aluminum terriffs. But
Speaker 3: this ten percent, one hundred and forty five percent tariff, No,
Speaker 3: he has not done that. He's used this thing called
Speaker 3: the International Economic Emergency Powers Act, which has never in
Speaker 3: its history been used for tariffs. The word tariff, the
Speaker 3: word tax does not appear in there at all. It's
Speaker 3: what we used, for example, to clamp down on Russia
Speaker 3: with sanctions, but those are not terraff right, and he's declared,
Speaker 3: you know, these emergencies, that we have a sentinel problem
Speaker 3: because of Canada, that the trade deficit which we've had
Speaker 3: for like fifty years is an emergency, those sorts of things.
Speaker 3: And then basically the Supreme Court has the question before it,
Speaker 3: do you know, does the president have the power to
Speaker 3: just say a law gives him that power even though
Speaker 3: the law doesn't say that. So that's going to be
Speaker 3: the question before the Supreme Court. There's multiple court cases
Speaker 3: put up by conservative you know, legal organizations who do
Speaker 3: not think the president has this power. So I think
Speaker 3: at the very least they're pretty legally questionable.
Speaker 1: So there are two ways that we solve this problem.
Speaker 1: One is that Congress takes away tariff powers from Trump.
Speaker 1: Then businesses know they'll be safe. They put on a tariff,
Speaker 1: they don't put on a tariff, but they know they
Speaker 1: won't be back and forth, so they can buy stuff
Speaker 1: they can on shore, they can offshore, et cetera. Or
Speaker 1: the Supreme Court takes away.
Speaker 3: The power from him exactly.
Speaker 1: This was really interesting. I'm sorry that I made you
Speaker 1: talk about ports, but I'm glad we got to talk
Speaker 1: about this because this is real stuff. So thank you
Speaker 1: for joining.
Speaker 3: Me, thanks for having me on Hope. I had never
Speaker 3: talked about parts again, but we'll see no moment pact.
Speaker 1: Jesse Cannon smile.
Speaker 2: One of the things that you know, I don't want
Speaker 2: to mansplait something that's happened to you many times. But
Speaker 2: one of the things that comes with the price of
Speaker 2: trump Ism is that your family gets terrorized when you
Speaker 2: become on the other side of them. It is very,
Speaker 2: very horrible to see after all the stuff that Kilbrego
Speaker 2: Garcia's family has gone through, that they are victim to
Speaker 2: this as well.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so Trump World has said a lot of bad
Speaker 1: things about Garcia, including every which way of trying to
Speaker 1: smear him. And again, like Garcia is not about Garcia
Speaker 1: the person. This is about Duke process to the thing.
Speaker 1: But either way, she has been now she's afraid for
Speaker 1: her safe. She's staying in an undisclosed location with her
Speaker 1: three children. I read this in the Times. Maybe it's
Speaker 1: not right, but that she had three special needs children.
Speaker 1: So this woman has now her husband is in this prison.
Speaker 1: We don't know if he'll ever come back. She is
Speaker 1: now in an undisclosed location with three special needs children.
Speaker 1: This is not the kind of stuff that you want
Speaker 1: happening in a democracy. And when you look at these numbers,
Speaker 1: you know, when you look at the bond market and
Speaker 1: you look at people flying from the dollar, people don't
Speaker 1: want to live in a banana republic. And that's what
Speaker 1: this is. This is real Banana republic stuff. So it
Speaker 1: is our moment of fuck Ray. That's it for this
Speaker 1: episode of Fast Politics. Tune in every Monday, Wednesday, Thursday
Speaker 1: and Saturday to hear the best minds and politics make
Speaker 1: sense of all this chaos. If you enjoy this podcast,
Speaker 1: please send it to a friend and keep the conversation going.
Speaker 1: Thanks for listening.